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The victor -- our Maine Coon tomcat Max, with nightvision still operational, enjoying a midmorning snack. After his latest kill, he wandered over to my wife and wanted petting. She refused, citing "mouse breath" and other concerns.

One of the dominant themes of the modern progressive movement, particularly Christian progressivism, is "disparate parties putting aside their differences and working toward common goals." In many respects, this is a noble undertaking. And as an alternative to the confrontational and schismatic struggles that have plagued Protestant Christianity for centuries, it is certainly a very appealing option.

A little over a century ago, the leaders of both the nascent progressive movement and the mainline Protestant churches situated in urban parishes began to recognize the terrible plight of the poor and disadvantaged living in the large cities of the United States. These people, largely immigrants from Europe, were exploited and tossed aside by greedy industrialists and then cast down as hopelessly ignorant and corrupted by the wealthy Anglo upper classes. Both social progressives, transformed by the writings of Marx and the science of Darwin, and mainline Protestants, driven by the tenants of the Christian Gospel, made the abatement of urban poverty their ultimate goal. To this end, mainline Protestant Christian denominations and secular leftists/progressives have been working in tandem on many social justice issues (community organizing, civil rights, health care rights, living wage, etc.) for over one hundred years.

Yet within this close relationship lies a problem that has continually plagued progressive Christians -- how does the Church prevent the Gospel from being polluted by the anti-Christian ideologies of secular progressives? One could earnestly ask the same question regarding the dangerous relationships between the "Religious Right," big business, and the military, but in this essay I want to specifically focus on how the pro-abortion teachings of the secular progressive movement have affected contemporary progressive Christianity.

The biggest lightening rod in the current abortion controversy is Sen. Barack Obama, a self-professed Christian who has also been one of the most outspoken and dogged foes of any legislation that could negatively affect abortion rights. His stubborn refusal to support the Illinois "born alive" legislation (which would have mandated that hospitals provide medical services for infants who survived abortion procedures) led to Alan Keyes' now infamous quote -- "Jesus Christ would not vote for Barack Obama."

Of course the Christian support for abortion does not end with Barack Obama. One of the nation's most active abortion rights advocacy groups is the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, an interfaith association of clergy and lay leaders who support abortion rights and sponsor birth control and sex education programs, primarily for inner-city for teenagers.

And I have had many sincere conversations with dedicated Christians, particularly those who work closely with the poor, where the topic of abortion has been introduced as a "necessary evil," an option that should be made available without stigma to women who know that they cannot provide a safe home for a child, and who simply don't "have it together enough" to endure a full term pregnancy and adoption procedure.

It's a compelling argument, to be sure, but is it consistent with the ethics exemplified by the life of Jesus Christ? Or is it an argument that is actually rooted in the selfish desires of man?

The 2006 incursion by Israeli military forces into southern Lebanon was largely prompted by the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by the terrorist group Hezbollah.

Today, the AP is reporting that "a notorious Lebanese attacker, four other militants and the bodies of 199 Arab fighters were traded for two dead Israeli soldiers."

Those two dead soldiers are Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. Another Israeli soldier kidnapped by Palestinian militants, Gilad Shalit, is believed to still be alive.

Critics are unhappy about the deal. "'What we've done now has made kidnapping soldiers the most profitable
game in town,' said Israeli security expert Martin Sherman. 'There is absolutely no reason why Hezbollah should not invest huge resources now, along with Hamas, in the next kidnapping.'" An Israeli official added, "No one should be surprised if Hamas will now raise the price for freeing [Shalit]."

Rabbi Yisrael Weiss, former Chief Rabbi of the IDF, who was present
during the transfer of the fallen soldiers yesterday, said that "the
verification process yesterday was very slow, because, if we thought
the enemy was cruel to the living and the dead, we were surprised, when
we opened the caskets, to discover just how cruel. And I'll leave it at
that." (emphasis added)

Obama would seem to have the skills and brains to be a legendary
community organizer, or state legislator, or U.S. senator. But
momentous accomplishments in each of those positions take time, and at
each level, Obama hit a wall, and turned his attention to a position of
greater power.

... a Globe review found that thousands of apartments across Chicago
that had been built with local, state, and federal subsidies -
including several hundred in Obama's former district - deteriorated so
completely that they were no longer habitable.

Grove Parc and
several other prominent failures were developed and managed by Obama's
close friends and political supporters. Those people profited from the
subsidies even as many of Obama's constituents suffered. Tenants lost
their homes; surrounding neighborhoods were blighted.

Some of the
residents of Grove Parc say they are angry that Obama did not notice
their plight. The development straddles the boundary of Obama's state
Senate district. Many of the tenants have been his constituents for
more than a decade.

"No one should have to live like this, and no
one did anything about it," said Cynthia Ashley, who has lived at Grove
Parc since 1994.

And this Chicago Sun-Times article looks at what happened to a $100,000 grant given by state senator Obama to the Englewood neighborhood, one of Chicago's most blighted residential areas:

As a state senator, Barack Obama gave $100,000 in state money to a
campaign volunteer who failed to deliver on a plan to create a botanic
garden in one of Chicago's most blighted neighborhoods.

Obama -- who was running for Congress when he announced the project
in 2000 -- said the green space in Englewood would build ''a sense of
neighborhood pride."

Instead, what was supposed to be a six-block stretch of trees and
paths is now a field of unfulfilled dreams, strewn with weeds, garbage
and broken pavement.

Kenny B. Smith, whose nonprofit group got the money, said it was
spent legitimately, mostly on underground site preparation. But he
admitted Thursday that the garden is a lost cause because other
government money never came through.

"We gave up," said Smith, who heads the Chicago Better Housing Association. "It was a losing battle."

Smith -- an early Obama supporter who gave $550 to his state and
congressional campaigns -- said he gave his paperwork documenting the
work to a state agency and no longer has it. A Department of Commerce
and Economic Opportunity spokeswoman said officials would look into the
matter.

Smith blamed the site's current poor condition on construction
material dumped there during the state's recent reconstruction of the
Dan Ryan Expy.

But a reporter walked the site last week with a landscape architect
from the Illinois Green Industry Association who found no evidence of
the work Smith cited. The only major changes since 2000: A gazebo was
added, and some trees were cut down.

More on Obama's community organizing efforts at The Confluence. And The American Thinker has much more on Obama's connections with The Woods Fund, and his efforts to put Woods Fund monies into the pockets of his Chicago cronies.

Furthermore, when promising hope and change to Englewood,
Obama pledged to remain at the forefront of the effort by raising a lot
more money for the renovation. At the time (January 14, 2000), Obama
had embarked on his effort to unseat Bobby Rush for his Congressional
seat. He promised to add more than a million dollars to the effort in
the launch of the project, which the Sun-Times notes was outside his
state Senate district but within Rush’s Congressional district. It’s
obvious what happened — Obama lost interest in Englewood as soon as
Rush beat him in the primaries, and simply reneged on his promise of
assistance.

... For a man with such a thin track record, the number of failures is
rather shocking — but that’s not the most significant part of this
story. It’s quite obvious that Obama has a pattern of talking about hope and change,
and caring less about it when it doesn’t boost him politically. As
soon as Englewood stopped being significant to his electoral hopes, he
turned his back on the neighborhood. That speaks to character more
than competence.

Ouch. It seems that the Left has once again found a "champion of the poor" who cares far more about his own ambitions than the plight of those who placed their hope and trust in him as their advocate and leader.

"Undoubtedly,
some think the Second Amendment is outmoded in our society, where our
standing army is the pride of our nation, where well trained police
forces provide personal security and where gun violence is a serious
problem. That is perhaps debatable. But what is not debatable is that
it is not the role of this court to pronounce the Second Amendment
extinct. We affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals. It is so
ordered." (emphasis added)

In other words, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court has declared that it is not the role of the Supreme Court to purge portions of the Constitution as "unconstitutional." That is a very good thing.

...

As the result of a Supreme Court decision, sex offenders in Louisiana (and probably elsewhere now) cannot receive the death penalty for seriously injuring children during a sexual assault, if their victims do not die. But in the wake of this decision, Louisiana has decided that courts can order these offenders to be castrated, either chemically or surgically. I don't believe that killing "makes right" in this case, but I would be very happy to see these people neutered.

Two supervisors were finally arrested in connection with the Agriprocessors raid in May. There is no reason to prosecute only employees when supervisors and management were obviously complicit in forgery and other crimes related to the illegal status of many of the plant's employees.

The US has finished the removal of Saddam Hussein's "yellowcake" raw uranium stockpile, all 550 metric tonnes of it. No evidence can positively confirm that any of this material was purchased after the 1991 UN lock-down of Saddam's nuclear program, but the existence of the material, plus mothballed laboratories and Saddam's own confessions, should positively confirm that Saddam planned to restart his nuclear program and enter into a nuclear arms race with Iran.

What will hopefully be the final purge of the remnants of Al-Qaeda from the northern Iraqi city of Mosul is being led by Iraqi security forces.

I'm not shy about charging liberals with Bush Derangement Syndrome when appropriate, and criticizing obviously political moves that seem more about damaging Republicans than benefiting the country. Specifically, during the last seven years Democrats have very often acted in ways that placed their own self-interest above our efforts to combat terrorism.

But I do not feel animosity toward the liberal/progressive worldview. I have traditionally described the liberal/conservative difference as one of glass half empty vs. glass half full. Both sides want a better America, but one side chooses to concentrate on the defects that need correcting, while the other concentrates on all the things we have done right and asks why we can't help others to achieve the same things. As Moran points out in his essay, both are essential for true democracy.

The impetus for this rant was a speech given by Obama two years ago at a conference sponsored by Call To Renewal, a liberal/progressive association of Christian pastors, authors, and lay-workers. You can read Obama's speech in its entirety here.
Obama doesn't have anything earth-shattering to say; he is merely
preaching to the choir on subjects that liberal Christians hold dear,
particularly finding shared strengths and working toward common goals,
rather than emphasizing differences and working against compromises.
(Curiously, this is something that liberals seem eager to initiate with
anyone except conservatives and Christian fundamentalists. Go figure.)

Obama begins his speech by citing an ad hominum attack from
Alan Keyes, his opponent during the 2004 Illinois senate race. Toward
the end of the race (when Keyes was down 40 points in the polls) he
charged that, "Jesus Christ would not vote for Barack Obama. Christ
would not vote for
Barack Obama because Barack Obama has behaved in a way that it is
inconceivable for Christ to have behaved."

Obama continues,

Conservative leaders have been all too happy to exploit this gap,
consistently reminding evangelical Christians that Democrats disrespect
their values and dislike their Church, while suggesting to the rest of
the country that religious Americans care only about issues like
abortion and gay marriage; school prayer and intelligent design.

Democrats, for the most part, have taken the bait. At best, we may
try to avoid the conversation about religious values altogether,
fearful of offending anyone and claiming that - regardless of our
personal beliefs - constitutional principles tie our hands. At worst,
there are some liberals who dismiss religion in the public square as
inherently irrational or intolerant, insisting on a caricature of
religious Americans that paints them as fanatical, or thinking that the
very word "Christian" describes one's political opponents, not people
of faith.

Now, such strategies of avoidance may work for progressives when our
opponent is Alan Keyes. But over the long haul, I think we make a
mistake when we fail to acknowledge the power of faith in people's
lives -- in the lives of the American people -- and I think it's time
that we join a serious debate about how to reconcile faith with our
modern, pluralistic democracy.

... Because when we ignore the debate about what it means to be a good
Christian or Muslim or Jew; when we discuss religion only in the
negative sense of where or how it should not be practiced, rather than
in the positive sense of what it tells us about our obligations towards
one another; when we shy away from religious venues and religious
broadcasts because we assume that we will be unwelcome - others will
fill the vacuum, those with the most insular views of faith, or those
who cynically use religion to justify partisan ends.

In other words, if we don't reach out to evangelical Christians and
other religious Americans and tell them what we stand for, then the
Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons and Alan Keyeses will continue to
hold sway.

Following this, Obama cited a lengthy list of examples of Christian
social activists who used their faith to influence progressive public
policies. Then he made the comments that twisted Dobson's panties into
a knot:

While I've already laid out some of the work that progressive
leaders need to do, I want to talk a little bit about what conservative
leaders need to do -- some truths they need to acknowledge.

For one, they need to understand the critical role that the
separation of church and state has played in preserving not only our
democracy, but the robustness of our religious practice. Folks tend to
forget that during our founding, it wasn't the atheists or the civil
libertarians who were the most effective champions of the First
Amendment. It was the persecuted minorities, it was Baptists like John
Leland who didn't want the established churches to impose their views
on folks who were getting happy out in the fields and teaching the
scripture to slaves. It was the forbearers of the evangelicals who were
the most adamant about not mingling government with religious, because
they did not want state-sponsored religion hindering their ability to
practice their faith as they understood it.

Moreover, given the increasing diversity of America's population,
the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once
were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish
nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a
nation of nonbelievers.

And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled
every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose
Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James
Dobson's, or Al Sharpton's? Which passages of Scripture should guide
our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery
is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy,
which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or
should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so
radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would
survive its application? So before we get carried away, let's read our
bibles. Folks haven't been reading their bibles.

It seems that Dobson and Co. missed the joke here, which is a
long-running observation by Christian leaders that the
liberal/secularist fear of a "theocracy" is totally ridiculous simply
because the Baptists, Pentecostals, and Methodists would never
relinquish control of anything to the other. Did Obama really "equate"
-- as Focus on the Family charges -- Dobson and Sharpton? Only if you
take Obama's comments completely out of context, which is what Dobson
and Minnery do. It seems very clear to me that Obama intentionally
chose two high-profile religious leaders with extremely different
worldviews and understandings of how Christianity should be applied in
public policy discussions.

If you want to appreciate just how far out of context Dobson and
Minnery have to take Obama in order to use his speech as a proof text
of their talking points, listen to this seven minute excerpt from
Dobson's radio program:

If Focus On the Family's talking points require such a deliberate
misrepresentation of opposing views in order to be coherent, then how
far should we trust their interpretation of Scripture? For that
matter, how far should we trust Barack Obama's?

Obama has recycled one of the oldest and most cliche attacks against
Christian fundamentalism's belief in biblical inerrancy, namely the
accusation that no one could ever espouse a complete literal interpretation and practice of
the Bible, because doing so would require practicing the
entire 600-plus commandments of Law as revealed to Moses by Yahweh in
Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

Of course Christians have never made the practice of the Law a part
of their faith. One of the earliest theological battles between
non-Jewish and Jewish Christians was over the role that Law was to play
in the Christian faith. In Acts 10, the apostle Peter was forced to confront his belief (as a devout Jew) that strict adherence to dietary laws was a
prerequisite for holiness. And the apostle Paul devotes nearly all of
his letter to the Galatians to explaining why it is not necessary for
the Galatians to become circumcised or observe Jewish law in order to
be considered holy in the sight of God. Christian doctrine teaches that the imitation
of Christ -- dying to oneself and being transformed by the work of the
Holy Spirit -- is the most fundamental requirement of holiness.

Because of this, it is highly unlikely that any Christian,
regardless of his particular religious heritage, would suggest a return
to the full observance of Law as a way to justify our society. Perhaps
Obama is being cute, pointing out to a progressive audience things that contemporary progressives would obviously consider to be barbaric.
(He did get a laugh from the crowd with the Leviticus line.) But in doing so he seriously deflates the legitimacy of his argument by attacking a straw man that Christians have never taken seriously.*

That being said, Obama's point about out-of-context Biblical literalism is right on the money. The truth is that no Christian believes in literal interpretation of the entire Bible. The fact that we have so many denominational schisms within Protestant Christianity bears witness to the fact that we have never had widespread agreement about which passages of scripture to take literally, and which to understand in a figurative or metaphorical context. What Obama is asking is simply this -- would those who read numerous verses from Leviticus literally as proof texts in support of capital punishment by the state also take The Sermon on the Mount literally and insist that the state use the Beatitudes to shape public policy related to individual welfare and defense? Would those who believe executions to be Biblically mandated also support foreign policy based around a literal, plain text interpretation of "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you," or an economy based around a literal, plain text interpretation of "Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you"? An interesting question, to be sure.

Dobson accuses Obama of "deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible," but in doing so he reveals Protestant fundamentalism's most glaring flaw, which is an assumed monopoly on the truth. This is the same error made by Alan Keyes when he dismissed Obama as a man completely at odds with Jesus Christ. Growing up in the Church of the Nazarene during the 1940's and 1950's, James Dobson surely learned traditional Protestant fundamentalist doctrine. Dobson's worldview is what it is, and it is shared by millions upon millions of Americans. But none of that gives Dobson or Keys divine authority to diminish Barack Obama or declare that his faith is heretical, even though Obama has consistently identified himself as pro-abortion.

I am mystified by the pro-abortion stance of many Christians that I know. I pray for them, that they may feel as passionately about ending abortion on demand as they do about ending the death penalty. But nowadays I feel more discomfort around conservatives who are moral absolutists than I do around "liberal" Christians who tolerate behaviors that I find repulsive. For some reason, moral absolutists seem to have a much more difficult time connecting with people who are suffering. They are very good at preaching, but struggle with solidarity. This is why "Moral Majority" types tend to alienate people rather than win widespread support among communities at large.

Fundamentalists say that this is because Satan blinds unbelievers to the truth. I say that people like James Dobson should spend more time reading their Bibles.

...

My Godblogging friend LaShawn Barber has also responded to Dobson's critique of Obama. She provides an easy-to-understand explanation of the Reformed Christian understanding of the relationship between the Levitical Law and its fulfillment through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This was the classic understanding that I was taught in Sunday School, but as I began a deeper study of theology I found this explanation to be somewhat lacking. Perhaps sometime in the near future I'll write an exposition of Leviticus and the alternative community established by God for the Israelites. Of course such a project will be difficult and time-consuming, particularly because it will demand clarity and brevity, the latter I struggle with greatly.

* Yes, I have heard of Rushdoony and The Institutes of Biblical Law. While many his philosophies have influenced a number of influential "Religious Right" leaders, there has never been a consensus among any group of serious Christians that we should move our nation immediately toward his concept of a "theonomy."

My title is drawn from the classic 1961 jazz album by the Dave Bailey Sextet entitled One Foot In the Gutter. One of the best jazz albums of all time, it holds a sure spot on my "desert island" list of music.